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Whitman High baseball coach Joe Cassidy was experiencing a bit of déj‡ vu Tuesday afternoon and he was none too happy about it. But after a few innings and an onslaught of runs, he could only smile.

The Vikings turned a rough first inning into a comfortable 17-7 victory against Paint Branch to improve to 5-1 heading into the spring break.

What disturbed Cassidy was his team's inability to drive in baserunners in scoring position. Jesse Mates opened the game with a double down the right field line and then moved to third on a sacrifice bunt by Max Hilbert, but a flyout to second base and a groundout left Mates stranded. The Panthers (4-2) came right back with two runs in the bottom of the first on three straight hits against Vikings starter Ethan Thompson for a 2-0 advantage.

"[Against] RM, we left a lot of guys on and didn't get a key hit," said Cassidy of his team's 7-2 loss to Richard Montgomery. "So the last couple of games, I've been really stressing that and working on it in practice. Obviously today, just putting the ball in play is helping."

The Vikings, in fact, punished their past three opponents by a combined 51-8 score, including victories of 21-1 in five innings against Poolesville April 1 and 13-0 in six innings against Springbrook on Monday. They quickly tied the game with two runs in the second inning on an error and two hits, including a double by Danny Lee, and Whitman went on to score two or more runs in each inning the rest of the way. Panthers ace Mike Noyes (3-1) was given his first loss of the season.

Contributing in a large way to Whitman's success was a bevy of Paint Branch errors in both the infield and the outfield, including plays such as groundballs in the outfield getting under gloves to give the Vikings extra bases. Many of the team's miscues helped prolong innings and produced extra runs.

"It's tough to swallow when our guys can't make routine plays," said Paint Branch coach Tommy Rey. "And it kind of snowballed where they got some momentum. I think we had 13 errors. I can't even think about how many unearned runs that is. It was not pretty."

Lee and Thompson helped make Paint Branch pay for its mistakes. Lee, the team's catcher and an All-Gazette first-team wrestler, went 4 for 5 with five runs batted in. He (.500 batting average, 13 RBI for the season) capped that performance with at two-run home run that travelled some 390 feet over the right center field fence in the team's six-run seventh inning. Thompson collected two hits, two runs and two RBI and earned the win on the mound, improving to 2-1 with a 3.12 earned run average.

"Throughout the season, we've been leaving too many guys on base, especially the RM game," Lee said. "We left 10 guys on base throughout the game and that's definitely a killer. When guys are on base, you've got to take advantage of it. Today, we did that and it shows on the scoreboard."

Other offensive heroes for Whitman included Danny Williams, who went 3 for 5 with four RBI, and Sam Sharpe, who knocked in a pair of runs with a triple.

For the Panthers, Frankie Poulos smacked a two-run home run in the sixth inning and walked twice. Noyes singled in a run and reached on a walk.